Loaded Language

I am troubled by the pervasive use of the word “terrorist,” a term routinely used to decry enemies who use violence and intimidation to bully or kill innocent people.  Since such violence is devotedly practiced universally, the term eludes clarity.  And when violence is met with additional violence, the term is used again and again by the “terrorists” claiming they are being “terrorized.”  Substitute “freedom fighter” or “anti-terrorist” for “terrorist” and you see my point.  Tagging a person as a “terrorist” is a political as well as a moral decision and may be more name-calling than an accurate attribution.  Apparently the world is full of terrorists, those on both sides of any border.  Pick a side.  Those other guys are terrorists.

        Because the word terrorist has become so charged, the BBC decided not to use the word in their reporting.  They see their job as recording facts, leaving moral or political conclusions to their readers and viewers.  Hence, in their opinion, an objective definition of terrorism is dicey and given to choosing good guys over bad guys, often not as simple as it may seem.  It is a loaded term, a judgment freely used by aggrieved parties.  At best, a definition is shifty, a subjective choice.  For instance, the Indian government labeled Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a plumber who led a human rights organization, as a “terrorist” because he advocated for a separate Sikh state in Punjab.  Though he merely led peaceful demonstrations, he was assassinated in Surrey, British Columbia in June 2023, which started a back-and-forth exchange of invective between Canada and India.  You’re a terrorist.  No, you’re a terrorist.  No, your momma is a terrorist.  Oh, yeah?  I know you are, but what am I?

       That’s language for you.  “When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty, “it means what I choose it to mean.”[1] Seems there is no end to the way we apply words to others without sound reasoning.  Recently, I noticed progressive friends labelling most Republicans as “fascists” and “racists.”  Similarly, I noticed my Republican friends (I do have one or two) calling liberals “communists” and “elitists.”  Spewing such insults is nothing more than juvenile playground taunting.  Such extreme labeling can only hurt—I am not a communist, nor are most GOP folks fascists.

       Politics has long been a junk drawer of loaded language.  How many times have you heard a politician start a statement with, “The American people…”?  Each one, no matter the political affiliation claiming to speak for the American people, is of course not really speaking for the American people.  And all the speakers are all in favor of freedom, liberty, and the American way, all words so diluted of meaning as to be catch-all terms for whatever and little or nothing.  As we know, lots of twaddle spills from the mouths of politicians.  From the rest of us as well.

       Words come in different shades and colors and often involve political or moral choices.  When used loosely or thoughtlessly, they are dangerous weapons we aim at others.

[1] ― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Stay Off the Freeway

As I drove to Seattle on I-5 from my home in Steilacoom, south of Tacoma, I kept a steady pace in the far-right lane for safety’s sake, restraining my speed to about five miles per hour above the limit.  Okay, I admit I was over the limit, but my car was the slowest one on the highway.  Most drivers were traveling 70 or 75 mph.  A few were doing 80 or so.  Occasionally, a hellbent risk-taker passed all of us nearing 100, as he or she switched lanes and weaved around the other lawbreakers.  You have surely noticed a devil-may-care predisposition many drivers exhibit since the onset of the pandemic.

Because of the recent uptick in fatalities on our highways and byways, it seems prudent to stay away from expressways, tollways, and freeways altogether.  I’m aware the odds of dying in a traffic crash are less than 1%, but each time I merge onto a freeway I experience the same feeling one must have when casting dice at a craps table.  Figure eventually the odds will catch up.  Are surface streets less dicey?  Yes, yes, I am aware surface streets can be more dangerous than America’s highways, but it only takes a few breathtaking trips on I-5 to qualify as a fear-of-driving sufferer.  Semi-truck drivers who have been on the road 15 hours without sleep, all those distracted drivers holding smartphones to their noses while going 75 mph, and the pickup truck loaded with box springs and mattresses barely secured as they flap and shuffle against headwinds—all high-speed hazards must give us pause.  Measured by the number of traffic deaths per capita, the German Autobahn is safer than most American interstates.  Google that conclusion if you have doubts.  In Washington state alone traffic deaths through July 2023 of this year have already surpassed 2022 year’s total, and each week we add more to the kill count.  It is too dangerous to drive on interstate highways.  Conclusion: don’t do it.  You may be dead tomorrow because you chose to merge onto Coffin Expressway.

Fair to say that we live in an auto-centric country, and as such we love the horsepower our cars provide.  The more horsepower the better.  You’ve seen the commercials: cars going way too fast, drivers grinning as if speed is happiness (even though small print warns you to not do what you are witnessing).  Or the commercial that shows a driver and his passengers clapping their knees as the car goes down the highway with no one steering.  Oy Vey!  “Sorry, officer.  I was eating a sandwich and my ADAS (advanced driver-assistance system) must have not seen that big yellow school bus.”  We depend on the highway patrol to enforce the laws of the road, but as we all know there aren’t enough traffic cops to do the job properly.  My theory: I could drive 90 MPH from here to Seattle without spotting a traffic cop.  Someone, I’m sure, tests my supposition right now.

Why the increase in traffic fatalities?  Speeding, distracted driving, and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol are the primary causes of car crashes.  Added to road dangers is a public permissiveness to lethal behavior.  A cultural change is needed, but technology can help lower the risks straightaway.  Automated speed enforcement cameras and other fixed radar devices work well.  Intelligent speed assistance systems which prevent drivers from exceeding speed limits are already in use on some European highways.  Traffic calming designs (roundabouts, speed humps, chicanes, rumble strips, and like engineering strategies) reduce crashes and injuries wherever they are employed.  Speed limiters (governors) on vehicles automatically restricts speed at or below the limit.  Plenty of engineering and technical advancements could be employed right now to save lives.  To be clear, however, politicians and the driving public would find it a hard sell to govern speed and driver options merely to save lives.  While the slaughter from car crashes is preventable, as is the carnage from gun deaths, we don’t have the political will or safety sense to stop the killing.  

Whether we like it or not, vehicles lacking steering wheels or foot pedals will someday take us where we want to go.  One assumes crashes will diminish or disappear when autonomous vehicle travel is perfected.  The more discretion is taken away from a human pilot, the safer the highways will become.  In future, smart highway technology will become the decider rather than the person behind the wheel, if a steering wheel is even available.

Lawsuit Lottery

It’s no secret there are more lawyers per capita in the United States than in any other country in the world.  According to the American Bar Association, 1.35 million lawyers were practicing during 2022.  Aside from using a handgun to shoot an enemy, the American way of settling disputes usually means litigation.  Even so, because wealthy people use a huge share of legal resources, underprivileged people have scant access to our civil justice system.  In fact, the US “lags behind in providing access to disadvantaged groups.  Legal assistance is frequently expensive or unavailable, and the gap between rich and poor individuals in terms of both actual use of and satisfaction with the civil court system is significant.  In addition there is a perception that ethnic minorities and foreigners receive unequal treatment.” (OneJustice, 2021)  Our justice system is a stacked deck favoring those who have the most resources and those who are eager to keep it that way, a conclusion which should shock no one.

In theory our justice system is supposed to treat well-heeled and underprivileged equally.  It does not.  In criminal cases, money bail is an obvious example of legal disparity.  If charged with a crime and one has sufficient funds, one may stay out of jail during a pretrial period; plus have a much better chance of not going to jail at all—if one is rich.  If poor, however, one may sit in jail for a long time before being convicted or exonerated of a crime.  In a real sense, the scales of justice weigh heavily in favor of well-moneyed people.  The most vulnerable are most likely to fall prey to our knee-to-the-throat money bail system.  Likewise, in civil justice court, we still have the equivalent of debtor’s prisons.  When trouble comes to a disadvantaged or poor person, jail or an unfair judgement is likely, unlike what happens to someone with a big bank account.  If a defendant owes court fees or cannot pay a traffic fine, for instance, in many states the scofflaw will be held in jail until a resolution can be found.  Though we are led to believe all people are treated equally in our justice system, on most judicial levels, courts rig the scales for the upper classes.  Justice, it appears, is not blind, and she has her hand out for the appropriate gratuity, not to mention a thumb on the scales to favor people with cash and influence.  Alas, she deals harshly with people who are poor, BIPOC, or otherwise disadvantaged.  A two-tiered justice system is the American way.

A prime example of wealth delaying or undermining justice is seen in none other than Donald Trump who has been playing the legal system like it’s both a lance and a shield.  Since 1980, he has been involved in 3500 legal actions in Federal and state courts according to USA Today.  Until now, he has been unassailable because he has used the legal system and his army of attorney consiglieres to protect his interests.  He plays with a stacked deck.  He habitually sues others.  He uses the justice system to one-sidedly delay justice, a legal rope-a-dope strategy.  He lawyers up.  He doubles down.  He’ll sue if you offend him.  If you sue him, he’ll sue you right back.  He almost never gets an unfair shake because he has a squad of lawyers filing briefs, making appeals, and keeping him far wide of imminent trouble.  During his tenure as president, he tried repeatedly to use the power of the justice system to harass and prosecute those whom he perceived as enemies.  More, he promises to weaponize the DOJ Department and to pursue his enemies if he is reelected in 2024.  Now, a year before the next presidential election, that the tables are turned, he cries foul, the victim of a “witch hunt.”  And it remains to be seen if he will finally be held accountable.  If not, the indictment ought to be leveled against our two-tiered justice system.

Teacher Crisis (Redux)

Memorably, George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’  Of course, he was wrong.  After all, Shaw publicly conveyed support for Stalin and Mussolini, so we shouldn’t put much value on his judgment, should we?  Notable can-do historical figures taught and used educational settings as springboards to great accomplishments.  Albert Einstein and John Adams were teachers early in their careers.  Socrates, C.S. Lewis, Clara Barton, Booker T. Washington, and Sir Isaac Newton were teachers.  They also were doers.  Flip through a list of Nobel Award winners: an inordinate number were teachers, researchers, lecturers, or affiliated workers in teaching institutions.  People who accomplish extraordinary achievements are frequently found in academic settings, which have spawned stunning American achievements, establishing a culture of scholarship and technical advancement unrivaled among the world’s nations.  The seminal force behind most weighty accomplishments: teachers.  No surprise.  However, our education system has recently entered a red zone, and prospects are dim for what lies ahead.

A few weeks ago, an article in The Washington Post offered this view: “America faces catastrophic teacher shortage” (Hannnah Natanson, 2022).  And recently, according to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), national testing scores for fourth grade students declined to a 30-year low.  Explaining why our children are not up to speed academically is complicated, but surely the COVID pandemic had a devastating impact on learning.  Add resource inequities that failed to serve underprivileged students during the dearth of in-person learning, and the report card for American education is dismal.  Forced to offer online classes, school districts were left with few delivery choices, none of which were as effective as brick-and-mortar education.  Surveys have shown that math and reading scores in K-12 grades plummeted since the time the pandemic forced students out of classrooms and onto alternative platforms.  Exacerbating the maladies in K-12 education, meager pay and low morale combined with obtrusive pressure from school boards and parents have hogtied teachers.  Why would an instructor want to remain on a job that pays little, is not respected by the community in which he or she serves, and is told that a considerable part of US history, its racial inequities, and matters of gender and sexuality are not to be included in courses and must not be part of class discussion?  Across the nation, buttinsky lawmakers have proposed placing cameras in classrooms for both security reasons and teacher accountability.  Teachers are taking cover from political storms that threaten their livelihood and rain blows on academic freedom.  Who can blame them for choosing to deliver pizza pies rather than be forced to eat humble pie?

In some states the teacher shortage is so critical that matriculating college students and military veterans have been recruited to fill-in despite their lack of training or grounding in germane disciplines.  In Florida, thanks to a program called Military Veterans Certification Pathway, a veteran can get a temporary teaching certificate without having earned a college degree.  That veteran needs only a C average in his or her unfinished undergraduate education.  In short, that person hasn’t done the work, nor is he or she likely to understand basic pedagogy.  A placeholder, a docent, a safety guard is that person holding forth in the classroom.  Remember your high school days; recall those stoical people who sat behind the big desk in Study Hall, the ones whose purpose was to keep things quiet and breakup disruptive behavior.  Those are the people being hired in districts with severe teacher drought.  Wait!  Why not address the medical shortage with the Military Veterans Certification Pathway?  Why go to medical school, anyhow?  Makes almost as much sense because improving our minds is equally as vital as healing our bodies.  How about addressing the airline pilot shortage with a slapdash crash course in becoming a jumbo jet pilot?  What the hell!  Looney Florida office-bearers along with their autocratic governor have undercut and disrespected the teaching profession entirely.  Rightwing policymakers have long tried to denigrate academic people because they, the undereducated folks, are jealous of bookish smart people, especially teachers, who probably gave those policymakers bad grades.  If I had a school age child in the Florida school system, I’d move out of state, or I’d use my life savings to enroll my child in a good private school.

Let’s admit it.  The K-12 education system in America is a mess and is about to become a tragedy.  According to a June 2022 NEA survey, nearly half of its three million members have recently considered quitting, and even more have entertained the idea of changing professions as soon as feasible.  This stark conclusion comes in the face of universally low pay, low morale, and increased busy-work taking teachers away from their students.

Don’t get me started on higher education.  It, too, suffers from a declining number of undergraduates while potential students weigh the economic costs of tuition and accompanying fees.  To make matters worse, many colleges and universities have lost faculty even as a bloat of administrators has burdened operating costs.  The highest paid employee of many colleges and universities is the football coach.  Last spring, UCLA posted a job listing that sought an assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry, PhD required, for no pay—zero salary.  Take it or leave it, chumps.  Why complain now?  Flimflammery has been a usual practice in higher education for decades.  Consider how many undergraduate classes are taught by graduate students who get about fifteen dollars per hour on average, add the postdocs stuck from year to year with bare bone salaries, and top that with thousands of adjunct faculty who must cobble together teaching assignments from one campus to another just to pay rent and food bills.

In the past, it has been our unapparelled educational system that gave us advantages other societies did not enjoy.  We are now in the process of losing whatever edge we had, if we haven’t already, because in some places teachers are being replaced with unqualified fill-ins who receive slap-dash training, if that.  Does it make sense for America to have a workforce loaded with ill-prepared recruits who don’t know how to solve critical problems, people who don’t read books or know how to use a calculator?  Our educational delivery systems are at a tipping point.  Student scores on achievement tests have decreased markedly over the last few years.  A large percentage of K-12 students come from families that fall under the poverty line, while funding for our schools has not kept abreast of need.  Our education crisis is about to become a catastrophe. 

After climate change and threatening signals from China and Russia, add our educational emergency to the list of hazards that confront us.

We are about to face a new pandemic called ignorance.  And there is no vaccination that will save us from its devastating consequences.

Fabulists

An encounter I had with the late chef and food critic Anthony Bourdain never happened.  False memory, sorry.  At the time we supposedly shared small talk and a pitcher of beer, I was working in Provincetown, Massachusetts as a pantry chef (a pretentious title because I had no kitchen experience) in an upscale restaurant.  But years later when Bourdain died, I read and reread the dates he lived and worked on Cape Cod and realized I must have encountered someone who looked like him but was irrefutably not him.  Come to think, many people I bumped into on the Cape during that hippie era looked like the youngish Bourdain, shaggy-coiffed and rail thin, another kitchen worker in seasonal restaurants catering to mobs of wealthy tourists coming from Philly or New York City.  As it happened, Anthony didn’t arrive in P-Town until a several summers after I had left the Cape.  In plain terms, I had invented a false memory.  Innocently, I thought I had met him, and after repeating the tale, I started to believe it.  Truth is I never met Anthony Bourdain.  I shared small talk and a nod in passing with someone who looked like him.  Never shared a pitcher of beer with him.  Never greeted him as we passed each other on the street.  Never met the guy.  Wish I had.

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams infamously recalled being in a helicopter that took fire during the Iraq war.  It was soon learned that the version of the story he told on national news was a false memory.  In fact, his helicopter was miles from the chopper that had sustained damage.  A distortion of memory prompted Mr. Williams to conflate his story.  He didn’t lie.  He believed the tale he told.  Nevertheless, his career took a downward dive for incorrectly relating his experience.

False memories are common, for I’m sure most folks believe they lived through an event or encounter they decorated with imaginative details.  They were not being dishonest, simply narrating with embellishment.  In some cases, people cannot make a distinction between memory and imagination, their stories growing in falseness with each retelling.  They are not being dishonest.  Not exactly.

For instance, my first memory, I often say, is the moment a large earthquake struck the Seattle area (especially the Olympia vicinity and Thurston County) in 1949.  I remember being picked me up and carried down wobbling stairs, shocking instability.  The memory is fractured—excitement, panic, a dramatic flight down porch steps to the grass of the backyard.  My first memory, except it is probably the invention that I picked up from others who told the story of that disaster and of my mother whisking me up and hurrying down the back porch and away from a shaking house.  I’m told it is unlikely (but possible) a two-year-old would have such a vivid memory.  Evidently, false memories are common when recounting intense and emotional events.

As it happens, it is easy to misremember.  One may be reliable and trustworthy but inaccurate.  Those stories embedded in memory may explain why eyewitness testimony in trials is often doubted by attorneys in forensic cases.  Gaslighting may come into play when one’s view of what happened comes into question by another.  If a false narration is repeated and conflated, a person may soon be convinced the reiterated story is true, or what was once true is now false.  According to psychology research, identity narratives evolve from the stories we experience and those that we hear from others.

So, alas, I never met Anthony Bourdain, and I probably heard stories about the 1949 earthquake, which I turned into a vivid memory.  I confess.  So now I will relate each of those false narratives for what they are: personal yarns.

Now let me tell you about the sixty-pound salmon I caught last year on the Yukon River. It all started when the engine on our float plane started to sputter….

Stay Away From Florida

Hatred is learned.

Rick Scott, junior senator from Florida, recently issued a travel advisory for politically left-leaning travelers to stay away from his state, claiming Floridians like freedom, liberty, and capitalism (apparently lefties don’t subscribe to these praiseworthy notions).  But, he cautioned, if you believe in big government, stay away from the Sunshine state.  Okay.  Though his declaration may have had a touch of sarcasm, he essentially argues folks must agree with him or they should stay away from or move from Florida because Floridians don’t like anyone positioned on the political left of Benito Mussolini, leader of the Italian Republican Fascist Party.  Not exactly his words, but that’s what he means.  I understand.  Because I don’t care much for either Scott or Il Duce, I promise to stay away from Florida.  Never wanted to go there in the first place.  I encourage all my friends and family members also to stay away from Texas and Idaho and Montana and other blood red states too, owing to their governments’ similar xenophobic political stance on social issues.  Bless their morally shameless hearts! 

Hatred is learned.

If I lived in Florida and had the authority to hand down proscriptions, I would offer a different boycott.  The NAACP, along with several other human rights organizations, has issued concerns over hostility dealt to people of color and those in marginalized communities.  Apparently the governor and his supporters don’t like the underclass.  If you are gay or brown or black or an immigrant or politically progressive the warning is clear—stay away from Florida.  According to Scott and other likeminded politicos, Floridians don’t want you there anyway.  So, in a cantankerous mood, I would issue a travel advisory to all Christians and others of like-minded religions to stay away or move from Florida (and Texas).  The New Testament teaches love and inclusion, not hate and divisiveness.  Yes, I am aware of the incongruity of advising against going to Florida because Floridians advise against others coming there—twisted logic, I suppose.  But I stand with the argument found on a sign I saw across town: “Love Your Neighbor, Asshole.”  That about sums up the argument, doesn’t it?

Florida is a political outlier.  The governor does not tolerate progressive thinking and is politically right of the ultra-far right MAGA crowd.  Aggressive attempts to erase Black history and restrict inclusion curricula, especially as it concerns LGPTQ+ people, in all levels of education have alarmed civil rights groups.  It should alarm all of us.

As I was saying, Christians ought to stay away from and/or move from Florida because the government has whitewashed slavery, claimed aspects of bondage benefited Black people, and has chosen to devalue immigrants, marginal populations, and the “Don’t Say Gay” bill CS/CS/HB 1557 targeting LGPTQ+ communities.  Led by their governor, Florida should be out-of-bounds for people who choose love over hate, New Testament mercy over Old Testament retribution.

Hatred is learned.

The cultural/political divide in our country has worsened over the last few years.  Entrenched and intransigent, the right and the left agree on nothing except their antipathy for one another.  The result can only damage and weaken our country, as it already has.  What makes the present separation different from past point-counterpoint divides is the degree of hostility, civil war savagery.  Loose talk from both sides of the divide about taking up arms and seizing the power creates an explosive condition.  Recently Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, said that if Donald Trump does not win the 2024 presidential election “it is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets.”  Others have expressed similar ideas.  Pardon me for being hypercritical, but Huckabee’s veiled threat is not a Christian point of view.  Is it time to unlock the gun safe and head for the streets?  Once there, how will we know whom to shoot?

Hatred is learned.  And people like Huckabee are the teachers.

Under the assumption that most Americans are tired of the animus between liberals and conservatives, between Democrats and Republicans, and between cosmopolitans and ruralists, is a realistic disengagement from mutual hatred possible?  Is it likely there are more peacemakers in America than troublemakers?

That’s my guess. 

  Hatred is learned.

Make No Mistake, It’s No Problem

The platitudinous candidate begins the press conference by saying, “Make no mistake, I will respond to the charges of taking kickbacks in due time.”  Really? Is the audience to conclude the cliché-ridden speaker is guilty or innocent or whatever?  Probably the speaker is being emphatic about how forceful and honest he is.  Chances are, though, he’s been naughty but refuses to confess.  Whatever the case, doesn’t matter, the back and forth is padded, standard gobbledygook.  If we believe otherwise, we are making a mistake.  An awesome mistake.  That’s what I’m talking about.

 

No, no, the speaker is, needless to say, in regard to, and basically speaking, for all intents and purposes, making an avowal that gives us advanced warning, ah, oh, you know, like, um, words, words, words.  Empty words, actually.  Really empty.  Bare naked words.  Totally empty.  Epic empty.  Word salad.  Rhetorical blah-blah-blah, and as a matter of fact, it is what it is.  Say no more.  And as an added bonus, each and every sudden impulse from the good office-seeker is simply a-Bob’s-your-uncle unexpected surprise.  Give me a break if you are about to tell me what is blatantly obvious, okay?  Have a nice day.  And thank you for your service.  Have a free gift on the house. 

 

Alas, what are we to do?  How do we escape the white noise of weightless words, the utility of empty suitcases, the nutritional value of cotton candy.  Haven’t you heard the daily reply: “No problem”?  You ask the clerk to gift wrap your purchase, and the reply comes, “No problem.”  Transaction complete, you say, “have a nice day.”  Basically, the sum total, if you catch my drift, we unpack empty phrases, leaving them all but void of meaning, of that I am absolutely certain.  Bark, bark, bark.  Chirp, chirp, chirp.

 

     Make no mistake, no doubt, I too use empty words each and every day.  At least that’s the record of my past history.  It is blatantly obvious to me, and my personal opinion, if you will, that using most words is in and of itself an empty use of verbiage.

 

     I used to tell my English composition students never to use the word “very” because it detracted from whatever it modified, as in very dead.  Dead is dead, of course, and does not need a very to make one even more dead than dead.  Very makes what it modifies less very.  Of that I am absolutely certain.

 

     Perhaps no phrase is more needless than “needless to say.”  That’s a TRUE FACT.  I gotta tell you, like, think about it, eh.

 

     I had a sudden impulse with no advanced warning to write about the useless words we use, and I got dizzy tripping over the possible responses.

 

Have a good day.

 

I needed some help with a computer problem a few years ago.  The young man helping me sort out a problem began every utterance with “Basically,” which immediately made me doubt that he knew what he was doing.  Basically, I’m guessing he was new to his job because using basically every sentence is a pretty insulting way to address someone who needs help.  Basically, the young man felt the need to lower his advice to my remedial level of computer knowledge.  Basically, he was correct about what I knew but didn’t have to rub my ignorance in my face.  Have a nice day!

 

Oh, by the way, one does not need to begin every utterance with, “I’ll tell you what.”  Let’s review.  If one says, “It is time to leave.”  How is that information improved by saying, “I’ll tell you what, it is time to leave”?  Done deal. You get my drift.

 

Peace out.  (Whatever the hell that means.) 

 

There was a period of time, I am absolutely certain, when new innovation will avoid standard balderdash.  It will be mostly awesome.  Basically.

Fast, Furious, and Stupid

The fast, furious, and reckless action movies portray street racing and exaggerated masculinity, plus moronic risk-taking with extra helpings of over-the-top explosions and mission impossible wonderment.  Cartoonish depictions of impossible and reckless stunts become glorified and slick juvenilia for popcorn-munching viewers, usually youngsters with undeveloped gerbil brains.  Closer to the point, many of these popular productions for our screens involve superheroes, or those shows featuring fast-paced fights, car chases, and mind-numbing stunts in all but plotless presentations.  Pure escape is the point, short term excitement, entertainment for those who, during another era, might enjoy reveling in the Three Stooges or the whacky chase scenes in the Keystone Cops. The bar set for this sort of entertainment is Limbo low.

Without needing to suffer through the unabridged features, I measure their worth by viewing previews and promotional clips.  What claptrap.  Why would I want to invest time in full-length screen crap?  As it happens, violence, sex, profanity, and gratuitous fireballs of all sorts are exactly what a thought-challenged movie watcher wants.  Oh, yeah!  And it is dangerous.  Because valorizing dangerous behavior undeniably leads to imitation by malleable viewers.  And these movies are geared for nascent noggins, viewers likely to be bored by anything less than jury-rigged thrills.  Studies have limited value in proving links between media releases and risk-taking behavior, but an intuitive conclusion is easily reached: SODOTO—see one, do one, teach one.

To illustrate the point, years ago I took a coffee break as I did my rounds as a legal messenger.  I settled in with a croissant and the newspaper across the street from a theater featuring a James Bond movie.  What I witnessed as the crowd exited into harsh sunshine drew me back to the same cafe a couple more times to verify what I had witnessed.  Still captured by the soigné and masculine fantasy of James Bond, many, if not most, of the men exiting the theater had become James Bond, or pretended to be, at least until they reached their dented VW Bugs in the littered parking lot behind the 7-Eleven.  These starstruck men were unwittingly doing the Chekhov acting technique, each one expressing internal impulses and feelings in the manner of their gestures and movements.  By golly, those male moviegoers had become James Bond.  Why not?  We identify with characters we see on screen.  Some of us, anyway.  Sometimes.  Danger has its appeal.  Why not become a jackass and get some attention?  Speaking of which—

“Jackass” MTV television series and the “Jackass Forever” large screen series are perfect examples of extravagant dares and dangerous stunts, not to mention humiliations and serious injuries that result.  People love watching others do ghastly deeds for the sake of humor.  Is it funny to hit someone’s genitalia with great force?  To blow up a porta potty with someone in it?  To light a match to someone’s intestinal gas?  The answer is yes for those who enjoy depraved humor.  Keep in mind a premise of humor is often the shock of the unexpected.  Is there a thrill in watching a jackass kiss a venous snake or drink a concoction that causes him vomit for the camera?  Well, yeah, after the cringe reaction will come a smile either from relief or from the notion that there but for the grace of God go I.  Schadenfreude delivers a smile and a chuckle.  Incongruity (the graceful ballet dancer slips on a banana peel and falls face-first) can bring a big laugh.  Funny is cruel.

This much is certain, show the Fast and Furious crap in a movie house filled with impressionable teenage drivers and risk-taking results will show up in traffic court in subsequent weeks.  [i]  Um, yes, what is easily correlated is behavior modeled after what we see, what we imitate.

[i] Anupam B. Jena, Aakash Jain and Tanner R. Hicks, NYT January 2018

Arts and Sciences

"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."  –Albert Einstein (1921)

Higher education made a roundabout maneuver over the last twenty years.  College liberal arts offerings have declined, chiefly humanities programs, yielding to job-related and nontheoretically applied courses.  Occupational practicality is responsible for many students shifting majors from traditional coursework to career related programs, i.e., engineering, manufacturing, and trendy STEM vocations.  The shift, broadly, in the mission of higher education has moved from emphases on critical thinking and human values to technocrat job training, from teaching substance to coaching skills.  Core subjects: English, math, social sciences, humanities, and science no longer are predominant supporting pillars of higher education.  While employers have long favored hiring college graduates with a liberal arts background, candidates with communication and analytical skills, these same graduates come to first-time jobs with generalized abilities rather than specific job proficiencies.  They have theoretical rather than practical talents to present to an employer.  A graduate in music theory, for instance, may have little to offer the business world and have a narrow path to apply that degree in any real-world livelihood.  As a result, it should come as no surprise that a steady decline in humanities majors has given way to market forces.  Many students opt for majors that lead to attractive starting salaries, pushing aside courses of study they may have instinctively desired.  It’s all about money, isn’t it?

Add disquieting changes caused by pandemic restrictions, and a significant shift in the value of college degrees, many would-be students are opting out of college altogether.  And why not?  Why spend all that money on four years of college, perhaps over $100,000.00, when many employers are willing to train applicants directly out of high school for good paying midlevel jobs?  The need for a college degree has become less important, even considering long-term monetary advantages of a college degree after paying about hundred thousand dollars on tuition, books, and room and board.  Regardless, eight straight years of decline in humanities majors (The Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay, November 22, 20121) have shown that free market forces have overtaken the idea that college training as human development trumps career-focused preparation.  “Show me the money,” has become the shrewd, if hackneyed request, from high school graduates.

The mission of college education has changed from developing critical thinking skills and acquiring how-to-learn proficiencies, as liberal education has in the past, to a job training enterprise.  College has always been a training ground for creating workers, but now the specification of college programs suggests that training workers is more important than developing values and problem-solving in people.  Training the mind rather than job training, that’s the difference between what a college degree once represented and what it is becoming.  What is at stake is the remainder of the humanities and liberal arts altogether.  Is it possible that the future of higher education will promote little or no humanities at all?  If so, what will result? 

     Our lives are data-driven, subsumed by computer code and analytics, algorithms and statistical tables.  Are we disengaging our humanity in favor of rubrics?  In favor of AI chatbots?  We are entertained by robots, GPS devices tell us where to go, and smart phones serve as arbiters, guides, and problem-solvers.  Go ahead and Google it.

     Trends shown by students and college administrators as they select areas of study are precursors to what education and our future will become.  That prospect is frightening.  But the educational future nevertheless promises to be humancentric.  It must be for our survival.

     “What are you going to do with that?”  That question is naturally asked of the philosophy graduate shortly after she or he throws her or his mortarboard cap into the air.  Perhaps the answer is—save us from ourselves?

     The challenge for the Arts and Sciences will be to accept changes in its traditional roles, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication, adding an emphasis of inclusion and a dash of empathy.

Celebrity Gossip

Consider these click-baits to stimulate your day. 

“Camila Mendes details struggles with eating disorder: 'I was really afraid of eating carbs.’”

Or this: “Amber Rose: I’m Done Dating Men.  They’re Disgusting.”

If that is not enough to quicken your heartbeat, perhaps this Brad Pitt tidbit will draw your eye: “Brad Pitt and His New Lady Ines de Ramon Were Photographed Sunbathing Topless in Cabo.”

Want more nothings just to bring you up to date: “Gisele Bündchen Celebrates First Valentine's Day Since Tom Brady Divorce by Smooching Her Dogs.”

       Why does anyone care about this drivel?  Why do our eyes widen as we read this crap?  Hunh, people sure do care though, lots of people.

Forgive my witlessness, but what exactly have the Kardashian sisters done to earn our attention?  Other than making oodles of money by endorsing products and an odd sex tape or two, what do they have to offer?  Anything come to mind?  Sorry, that’s a rhetorical question.  Come to think, why should we care if Prince Harry has family issues that bruise his royal feelings?  Really is there a good reason to know that Kate Hudson carries nipple covers in her purse?  And, by the way, are those housewives on the Real Housewives of [whatever city comes to mind] worthy of our consideration for even two minutes?  Why should we care?  For obvious reasons, celebrity gossip is popular for those of us standing in the wings viewing those who soak up applause in the footlights.

We ike gossip.  We like to uncover secrets.  We want to know what so-and-so is doing to whom, and why, even if the whole story amounts to little or nothing, which it usually does.  Talking about others while they are not present allows us a moment of detached oversight, and is, of course, what people do and have been doing long before Iago whispered in Othello’s ear.  We keep things whole, I suppose, by telling stories, true or invented.  “Listen, friend, do you know the woman who walks her dog past your house each afternoon has a dark past?”  Those narrations apply an element of bonding to our lives.  In telling others the trivia or observations of a celebrity (or neighbor), we tighten social connections.  In a way, gossip contributes to fellowship and gives us a common story.  And, of course, negative gossip, say for instance, a public figure caught on camera urinating in public, well such an inconsequential tidbit of chinwag falls neatly inline for schadenfreude.  How delightful the failings of others.  But for the grace of God go the rest of us when we have to go with no place to go.

Gossip has even become a game, so the reader may wallow in the possibilities: “Which reality personality wears pajamas while shopping at the grocery store?”  “Who among the elite politicians refuses to wear underwear?”  “Guess who cheats on his wife even as his wife cheats on him?  And so on.

In a real way, gossip binds communities and assures us of our commonality. Recently, a SWAT operation disrupted the peace of an early morning in our neighborhood.  Nothing sorted out the drama on the evening news until a week later when details were released by the FBI: a drug bust, a white supremist organization, and dozens of arrests here in Washington state and around the country.  Until specific information became available, our neighborhood buzzed with speculation and over-the-fence gossip about what happened and why.  We talked about the incident because it happened right down the street and, along with all idle chatting, neighbors found togetherness, a commonality of experience even if we did not know exactly what had happened.  The result was a connectedness.  In the process, I suppose we let off the steam of anxiety coming from having armed authorities barking on loudspeakers and setting off flash-bangs while we peeked from bedroom windows.

By the way, this just in.  “Candace Cameron Bure ‘totally forgot’ to get husband Val a 27th anniversary gift.  Hmm, who would have thought?

Liars

  “Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth. Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.”

                       --J. Edgar Hoover

       J. Edgar Hoover was a well-documented concealer, stacking the deck of intrigue and expertly applying the knack of double-dealing, which included blackmail and a private pornography collection.  He was a falsifier.  If Hoover wasn’t an outright liar, he was certainly dishonest and duplicitous, common blemishes among autocrats.  Leading to the question: on some level, are we all liars?

Most psychology experts conclude the answer is YES.  Lying is a learned behavior, not an innate trait, but still as common as spit. Example: about every third time I say, “Nice to see you,” I confess to an untruth, perhaps not an outright perfidious lie but a remark wide of truth.  Often I say, “I’ll call you in a day or two,” knowing I won’t call for weeks, if at all.  Sometimes I distort truth just to be polite.  To one degree or another, most of us use white lies or fail to acknowledge truth when the moment might be awkward or hurtful.  No lie.  Unless we choose a diplomatic response, there is no tactful answer to the question, “Do these pants make my backside look fat?”  Especially if the obvious and truthful answer is: “Nothing short of two yards of fabric can conceal such a fat ass.”

The cynic philosopher Diogenes was a radical truth-teller, taking virtue to an extreme as he tried to find an honest man.  Apparently, he found only liars in every man he examined in the glow of his lamp.  No doubt he would get the same results if he surveyed the politicos in Washington DC.  Or any other place.

Speaking of bigtime liars, Trump once claimed that he was the most honest man in America.  Sure, on its surface, that’s a lie that we can all spot.  Even his friends and family know he is a liar.  In his case, it would be a stretch to find a person less honest than Trump.  As we know, he is a barefaced liar.  He makes lying a spectacle.  For most of us, however, lying is a social kindness or an escape from unpleasantness.  “Why, yes, you do look as if you have lost some weight.”  “Of course, we’ll get together real soon.”  “Believe it or not, my first memory came within minutes of my birth.”  “I didn’t really want the promotion, anyway.”  “I can tell when anyone is lying to me.”  “It was so n ice to meet you.”

Politeness urges us to avoid awkwardness or insult.  What would happen if we responded with unexpurgated truth?  My God, your children are ugly.”  “As a matter of fact, your haircut is a disaster.”  “Sadly, your laziness precludes you from being promoted.”  “Sorry, I won’t lend money to you because you are a swindler.”  “Please don’t talk to me anymore because I find your company tedious.”  If these are brutal truths, then any diplomatic responses meant to deceive would be lies.  We lie to save face, to avoid unpleasantness, to boost the value of our accomplishments, to prevent conflict, and to excuse ourselves from work or school, not to mention dozens of other reasons which fall under the category of impromptu lying.

If what said is intended to do no harm, even if it is untrue, let’s acknowledge a lie with a wink and a nod.

Okay, Let's Ban Books

       Imagine a community much like the one in which you live, similar but strikingly dissimilar.  In this hypothetical society, most, if not all citizens, are neoliberal, fervently anti-corporation and anti-consumerist.  Frequently, large groups of activists protest corporate authority and systemic greed.  Though it may seem counterintuitive, a growing number of community leaders want to silence the breeding grounds of societal decay by banning voices considered destructive to the welfare of “we the people.”  If that’s how you want to play the game, they say, let’s do it your way.  And so, in a move commensurate to what neocon communities have done, not to mention some do-it-my-way dictatorial national leaders, and especially the Nazis prior to WWII, our imaginary society proposes to fight degeneration by disallowing the spread of propaganda that is harmful to our social order.  As such, the following literature, they proclaim, will no longer be available in libraries and on classroom shelves:

• "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand

• "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville

• "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill

• "God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'" by William F. Buckley, Jr.

• “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right” by Ann Coulter

• “The Federalist Papers”

• “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek

       That’s for starters.  Many more titles will be banned as community leaders thumb through library holdings undermining the common good.  In fact, a heavy-duty inchoate movement is underway prohibiting non-woke voices from fouling the air in education.  Of course, all Christian Nationalists will be kept from spewing their toxic views in public spaces.  Additionally, as you may have heard, leadership is now considering redacting the Second Amendment from the Constitution, though many in the cohort believe such a move may stir too great an opposition from the powerful but foolish rightwing goons.  The question one ought to ask is: What is best for the public good?  The best protection for the most people?  In this case, censorship is good because it keeps vile influences from promoting avaricious ends, and because it improves civic behavior.

       Opponents of this proposition might point out that a good reason for banning books is that once something is banned it becomes attractive.  Case in point, the sign posted in a vacant lot somewhere in the north of England: “It is forbidden to throw stones at this notice.”  Passersby, of course, would see the sign and immediately scan the ground for a suitable rock to throw.  That’s the weakness in my argument, I suppose; tell people that they mustn’t, and they will straightaway think they must. 

As a counterbalance, perhaps we should just leave things be.  Apparently, school board meetings across America are having oodles of brouhahas over books educators use as teaching tools.  I recall how eager I was to read The Catcher in the Rye during my school days because I was told I mustn’t read it.  In fact, those proscriptions became a must-read list for me.

Seems that fed up parents are storming school board meetings across the country with demands that some book or another be banned, that their children not be exposed to filth and degenerate influences.  Parental rights are all the rage.  Got it.  Tit for tat, eh.  Is it fair to suggest that many, if not most, of the complaints come from parents influenced more by dogma than by educational wisdom?  If a parent suspects that a book mentions anything relating to gay or trans hanky-panky, an immediate rejection is raised to that book’s place on a library shelf even if the objecting parent has never opened the book’s cover.  Parental rights should apply to all parents, shouldn’t they, not only those who object to rainbows and naughty words.  Can we assume a baseline standard of virtuousness when it comes to what is taught in our public schools?  Freedom of thought and teaching students to think for themselves have long been cornerstones of the American educational system, but throughout our educational history people have stepped forward to call attention to worms in the fruit, so to speak.

So if I and likeminded parents object to our children assigned to read “The Federalist Papers,” shouldn’t we be able to ban that assignment and its perfidious conclusions?  We don’t want our progeny exposed to the poison of federalist propaganda, do we?

Understand, I disagree with most of the above drivel.  Banning books, subjects, ideas, simply denies a minority view, as well as discovery.

If a book offends, don’t read any further.  Leave teachers, librarians, and readers free to determine what’s beyond the well-meaning but naysayer censors.

Your Call is Important to Us

       After announcing how important my call is, the automated voice intones that “due to a high volume, my wait time will be fourteen minutes.”  Two observations: 1) “high volume” is likely a result of an inefficient phone tree system and/or inadequate staffing, and 2) My call is not particularly important to anyone but me.  Understand, I don’t want to go online to solve my issue, which is what the bot keeps requesting that I do.  I don’t want to listen to options which will not address the matter I want resolved.  And, no, I don’t want to take a survey when I finish my call.  Clearly, we have become sheep as robot herders insist we follow their commands.  We have been commandeered.  Do this.  Do that.  If you don’t follow the instructions framed by software, hang up and forget about it.

       Recently, I went to a medical lab for a blood draw.  When I entered the waiting room, hey, no receptionist—what’s all this then?  Treating the situation like a locked-room problem, I approached a computer contraption mounted on a podium that posed commands.  Okay.  Tap the screen.  All right.  Place your driver’s license in the tray.  Fine.  Turn over the license to show the backside.  Got it.  Place your medical insurance card on the tray.  Turn it over to show the flipside.  All good.  The computer decreed my name and wait time will appear on the screen above the intake door.  Sheesh, okay.  All set.  Wait!  An elderly couple walked in after I finished doing what I was directed to do, and they were puzzled to the point of paralysis (I assumed, to their credit, they were Luddites simply ignorant of digital procedures).  I tried to help them get through the digital wickets, but they didn’t have a driver’s license and their medical paperwork didn’t fit into the tray.  Finally, they turned around and left.  Not until my name popped up on the screen mounted above the door did I encounter a human who appeared across the threshold holding a digital tablet.  Then the phlebotomist who met me guided me down a hallway to her operatory, copied my paperwork and spent a few minutes getting clearance from the data divinities embedded somewhere in the ether or cloud or accounts receivable overlords as underscored by computer prompts.  My risible conclusion settled on me when I found my bloodwork results online a few days later: humans have become nearly expendable for most business transactions.  So shut up already, you human impediment.

Lately, I’ve encountered companies that don’t have phones.  Facebook or Meta or whatever they call themselves does not have phone support because you can just go to hell and shut up about it.  Why should they have contact with people’s troubles?  The only way to access these immense companies is via email or internet chat.  Huge companies just don’t want to talk to people and listen to their problems.  Why should they?  Callers too often are angry or frustrated and unnecessary to smooth business operations just because Acme International, LTD doesn’t give a hoot or holler about the annoyance people often express.  So what if you don’t like it.  Talk to the wall, why don’t you?

       Clearly, we are being forced to follow the ultimations of automation.  It is impossible to avoid the network of data collection and algorithms that follow and define us.  Also, we must do what bots tell us to do.  We must succumb to the directions spelled out in computer code.  It’s obligatory.  If you don’t enter the proper response in the box provided, you will not be able to continue.  If you refuse to comply, as I sometimes do, you are denied service.  In some ways, we are herded and counted and defined and analyzed by the chutes and ladders we must navigate.  You got a problem with that?

Complex snags usually cannot be solved by punching keys as a response to a phone bot, can they?  Not yet anyway.  We remain in the upswing curve of history where a human is necessary to address and solve complicated issues.  Might not be the case a few decades forward, but for now we are essential.  Alas, one must negotiate one’s way through the bot defenses before reaching an actual person.  Too often, one must circle around phone tree hell to finally talk to a person.  If a person is on duty.

       Surely you’ve been at a restaurant that promotes using QR codes to present menus and to place an order.  Of course, if you didn’t bring a smart phone or don’t have one, you must request a hardcopy menu.  If you have a phone with a camera and the ability to scan a code, you may find the print too small and scrolling a problem as you look for daily specials, which probably aren’t accessible.  In addition, come on, when patrons take out phones the temptation presents itself to check emails and messages and whatever else they find they find as a digital distraction.  A tableful of diners looking at their phones will likely blunt the joy of eating out.

       I remember chuckling over a cartoon that makes the point perfectly.  The scene: a college classroom.  On the podium is a tape recorder.  The professor is a no-show for the day’s class, and his recorded lecture is playing.  All the student seats are empty; however, each student desk features a tape recorder, so students can record the recorded lecture.  Funny, huh?  Even so, someone has to push “Play” and “Record.”

Armed and Dangerous

—-"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

— Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.) 

       Happens almost every day: a crime committed, a culprit on the run, a warning that the suspect should be considered armed and dangerous.

       Judging from news sources, I conclude that damn near everyone in America should be considered armed and dangerous.  Has a day gone by in your neck of the woods that someone hasn’t shot someone else for whatever reason?  Or no reason at all?  Recently, a six-year-old shot his teacher.  Not to be outdone, man’s best friend, his dog, stepped on a loaded rifle and put a bullet through the man’s back, killing him.  So let’s assume that everyone is packing a weapon and may shoot you if you make a threatening move, even that Girl Scout selling cookies in front of the Safeway.  Heck, she might get the drop on you if you reach for your wallet too quickly.  Be careful.  We hit record numbers of casualties via gun violence in 2021 and 2022, and the numbers promise to rise even further as we become accepting and desensitized to the latest harvesting of human life in schools, shopping centers, dance halls, and night spots.  You consider the possibility that you may be shot and killed if you go to the local mall to buy a pair of shoes because shopping malls are notorious killing zones in America.  Don’t go there.  Stay home and watch the news of the killings on television.

No secret that in our country guns outnumber people.  We love guns. Figures from Pew Research Center show that we are devoted gun people, about 120 guns for every 100 people.  Mass shootings have become commonplace. After some meth-fueled shooter kills a dozen people, the nation goes headlong into our thoughts-and-prayers phase before we do nothing until the next mass shooting, a circular response of doing nothing ad nauseam.  And so on.  We consistently do nothing after each unspeakable mass murder.  I’ve quit asking, “Why are the flags at half-mast?”  In fact, it would be smart to keep flags at half-mast permanently because one mass killing follows on the heels of another with the constancy of clockwork.  Tick-tock, boom!  One wonders if there is a breaking point.  How many killings a week will it take before we do something meaningful to reduce or eliminate shooting deaths?  Twenty, 50, 200, 1,000?  At some point, even an NRA diehard will admit that something must be done.  Eventually we will run low on ammo and tolerance.  Remember the clichéd bumper sticker from gun rights advocates, "I'll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands"?  If the gun owner can’t have his or her gun, he or she wants to be dead?  Seriously?  That just might happen.

       Take heart.  We aren’t there yet.  Personal protection and Second Amendment rights are often cited as reasons for owning a gun.  My take is that Americans just like to shoot people.  We are awash with examples of people shooting people: evening news, cop shows, network action dramas, first-person shooter games.  Always someone pulls out a gun and shoots someone.  We see the whole appalling, graphic, and clichéd views, replete with exploding cars, bursting helicopters, people jumping from one rooftop to another, brawny cops kicking down doors and entering with drawn weapons in firing posture.  Lots of bullets flying.  Violence served in layers, so much so it becomes ho-hum stale bread to most of us.  We were once a Norman Rockwell America.  Now we are an AR-15 America.  There are roughly 434 million firearms in American homes.  About 20 million are AR-15 or similar models.

If one owns a gun, it must be used occasionally, right?  We’ve been locked and loaded for some time.  Probate inventories from 1774 indicate that more guns than Bibles were found in households. (Heather, 2002)  I know, I know, we have a right to bear arms.  The British are coming.  “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  One time in history that made sense.  Not anymore.  Not now!  We have a military that has more than enough to protect us from harm.  We do not need to protect ourselves from the British; we need to protect ourselves from ourselves.

       We know what must be done to stop gun related bloodshed: gun control.  Yup, the best safeguard would be to abolish the Second Amendment altogether, but we know that is not going to happen.  What could happen, though, is plenty of gun safety measures that would make our society a bit less scary.  Those measures include requiring most firearms to be smart guns (just as we now require seat belts and air bags in our automobiles), eliminate or greatly restrict gun-carry permits, and remove the immunity that gun manufacturing companies have in our legal system.

       America is on suicide watch.  We have a handguns galore.  We are angry and depressed.  Too many of us have itchy trigger-fingers.  Other countries, Japan, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, and others, now warn their citizens that coming to America can be especially risky and to exercise increased caution, which is advice that we should all heed.

Rants and Raves

The Seattle Times features a write-up each day in which readers air their gripes (rants) or praises (raves).  For reasons I do not understand, I never fail to read that space-filler column.

Each morning I am amazed that people are offended by everything and/or nothing at all.  Just stand at your window to check the weather and some nosey neighbor will complain that you are a nosey neighbor and ought to be horsewhipped and thrown in jail.  Water your lawn, and someone will be offended that you are contributing to worldwide hunger and that you are a thoughtless and profligate waster.  Refuse to water your lawn, and someone will complain that your property is an eyesore in the community and that you should be horsewhipped and jailed.  In an act of kindness, you slow down a bit on the freeway to allow another motorist to merge, but the driver behind you rages and blasts his horn and shows you one of his fingers because he now must drive slightly below the speed limit.  Feed the pigeons in the park, and someone will demand that you stop destroying the ecosystem.  On a cold winter’s day, idle your car engine before pulling out of the driveway, and someone will allege that you are destroying the ecosystem.  Give a dollar to a panhandler, and someone will disapprove on the grounds that you are encouraging quitters.  You make the mistake of placing glass in the wrong recycling bin, and someone will claim you are destroying the ecosystem.  It is inescapable.  Someone will be displeased with you each day no matter what you do.  You are a horrible person for doing what you did or for not doing what you should have done.  In either case, someone will be displeased and demand that you be horsewhipped and thrown in jail.

  It should be no surprise that most raves come from acts of kindness, something as insignificant as a smile will make someone’s day.  Tip your hat to a passing woman and say, “Ma’am,” the way John Wayne did in all those westerns, and you will be a saint (or you might be labeled a sexist pig by someone who thinks you should be thrown in jail and horsewhipped).  Carry a plastic grocery bag of your dog’s poop in the park, and you will be nominated for citizen of the year.  Volunteer for a shift at the local food bank, and you may receive a chorus of “For he’s a jolly good fellow.”  Hold the door open for an elderly woman struggling with bulging shopping bags, and you are a sterling citizen.  Flip a coin, for whatever we do or don’t do may prompt a rave or a rant.  It’s fifty-fifty.

Perhaps the pandemic made us a touch grumpy.  Lately, people are especially prone to complain about potholes, late mail delivery, loud leaf blowers, airplane noise, and about every little annoyance one might imagine.  We complain about drivers who appear to be using their phones with one hand and steering with the other, inaccurate weather reports, neighbors who feed the birds, municipalities that are slow in changing the street light bulbs, neighbors who keep snakes, neighbors who play loud music, neighbors who don’t trim their hedges, people who have neck tattoos, people who talk too loudly, people who don’t talk loudly enough, the price of eggs, and so on.  After reading that column over the years, I doubt that there is a way to avoid annoying someone over the slightest conduct.  “Do I dare to eat a peach?”  Conclusion: people are annoyed by almost anything one does or doesn’t do.  You may annoy someone if you smile, or frown, or show indifference.  If you live to please others, you’re doomed.  If you live to comment on the shortcomings of others, you are equally doomed.

I have always favored the kudos, the raves.  Usually praise is bestowed for thoughtfulness: a librarian who took extra efforts to find the apposite book for a special needs student, a mail carrier who delivers the mail to the house rather than the street letterbox because the resident has a hard time walking, a kid who stands up for a bullied friend, a coach who plays the second-string players after the score gets out of reach.  A special rave to those thoughtful people who interrupt their day to stop for a stray dog or cat in hopes to find its owner and to save the life of an innocent animal.  Health care employees get lots of raves for doing their jobs with a personal touch for their patients.  Assign yourself the job of picking up trash in your local park, and people will applaud and give you thumbs-up.

For those who enjoy a good rant, including me, a timeout might be in order. Complaining can be good for all of us, but is it too much to ask to keep our powder dry until it is important?  And for those of you who delight with thank-yous and encouragement, rave on, rave on.

Other than ranting or raving, another choice presents itself.  One may choose the non-judgmental approach.  Sometimes a good long ‘Meh!” is just the thing.  

Shaking the Coin Cup

       The Whole Foods cashier asks, “Would you like to round up for a donation to the local food bank?”  Outside the store, the panhandler sitting on the curb appeals, “Anything will help, and God bless.”  The voice on the car radio pleads, “We only have two more hours in our pledge drive for NPR, so call us at….”  Because I find fundraisers more tedious than bona fide ads, I switch radio stations and am presented with the “Kars4Kids” jingle, a request that I donate my car to help kids, though no mention is made of what the kids need and who sponsors the effort.  Uh-oh, wouldn’t you know, traffic is slow getting through the intersection.  Ah, unruh, I see what’s happening.  Moving between lanes of vehicles, firefighters and EMTs implore motorists who have stopped at the light to fill their gumboots with bills and spare change for the annual MDA Fill the Boot campaign.  Having run the gauntlet of beggars, I arrive home, collect the mail and find urgent requests for money from organizations I have supported in the past: Humane Society, Doctors Without Borders, Saint Jude Research Hospital, Lutheran World Relief, and ACLU.  Retreating to my computer screen to retrieve e-mail, I find more pressing requests from Nancy Pelosi, Wolf Haven International, Barack Obama, and a dozen others on bended knee.  If only I were a rich man….  If that is not enough, the phone rings, and an automated voice asks that I hold the line to speak with an operator who tells me that he’d like to send an envelope and needs to know if I will give generously for a special fund to help police and firefighters.  Wow!  And I haven’t even begun to watch the game on television I am eager to see, during which, between innings, come more pleas for money for good causes galore.

       E-gad!

       Stop!  Who doesn’t struggle with the ethics of the everlasting hustle for good causes?  An untidy patchwork of nonprofit organizations (so many good causes, so few available dollars) may make it difficult to focus on the salient needs facing a community.  For instance, if I contribute to a scholarship fund for indigenous students (a good cause in my view), am I overlooking the dire needs of all the homeless folks camping in abject poverty right down the street?  Do I follow the lead of American oligarchs (the billionaires we hear about daily) and feed funds to those causes that they champion?  Poverty, hunger, and disease get the most attention as charities jostle in the line leading to one’s wallet.  But it is important to look beyond marketing claims made by charities to see if their work and values align with the one making the contribution.

       Pleas for money overwhelm.  Thousands of agents for worthy causes shake the coin cup in our faces, and each day we suffer a twinge of guilt when saying, “No, sorry, not this time.”  Add to the worthy causes are all those scams and gimme-your-money grifters who find us no matter how much we try to hide from their hectoring, and we are left with the sad conclusion that enough is never enough. The hustle is on now and forever.  Amen.

       Similar to Portia’s claim that mercy blesses the one receiving as well as the one bestowing it, charity also claims that double enrichment.  Choosing the time and values in giving need not be tricky.  Most relationships are transactional, so contributing to charities should fulfill values and fit the moment appropriately for both the giver and receiver, another way of saying there is a time and place for opening one’s wallet.  Giving freely is not always a good thing, however, especially if one is contributing to a toxic or enabling situation, which became a lesson for my generous brother.  He was working at a local food bank when he was essentially fired from his volunteer gig.  The manager of the charity discovered that Tim was not only distributing cans of beans and boxes of mac and cheese but was also handing out cash to those who claimed they urgently needed a few bucks.  Against operating policies of the charity, Tim was forking over cash he could not afford to give away.  The use of that money may or may not have found useful purposes, but many of those receiving food (and Tim’s money) admitted to having addictions, especially alcoholism.  Tim’s generosity got him fired, as it should have done.  That sort of charity can easily be harmful, even deadly.   

Aristotle said, “The essence of life is to serve others and do good.”  Philanthropy does not always do good, does it?  Sometimes it perpetuates paternalism and top-down values that may not be in the best interest of those receiving gifts.  It may even invite unintended harmful consequences.

To be clear, donating time and money to worthwhile causes elevates all of us. But indiscriminating giving is not the solution to what ails the world.

To give is to receive, yes.  To give judiciously is to receive wisely.

Turning the Other Cheek

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  29To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.  31And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

— Jesus Christ, English Standard Version (Luke 6:27–31)

       As the 2022 mid-term elections ramped up, harsh political rhetoric grew so venomous that I found myself participating by imagining what karmic justice it would take to remand Donald Trump to jail and to waterboard the truth out of him.  After all, he recommended the harsh truth-telling procedure be reinstituted by our military because, as he said, “torture works.”  Okay, I get it, so let’s try it on him.  Why?  Because he encouraged his followers to execute a coup d’état. Advocating the overthrow of our duly elected leader seems like serious crime.  I’ll bet he’ll ‘fess up to leading that insurrection if water pressure were applied.  Our former president is, by universal consensus, a pathological liar, so the best way to inspire him to come clean would, in my view, be waterboarding.  Such extreme treatment would be a kindness to him because he would finally be washed in the truth, and that would liberate his guilty soul.  Though, admittedly, I am not sure he has ever felt guilt.  And, of course, I am uncertain that he has a salvageable soul.  Regardless, the idea: vengeance.  Encourage him to admit that the trumped-up stories about everything he has ever said are lies and, between breaths, listen to him recant.

To bring us up to date, after declaring he will run again for president, Trump announced, as he has in the past, that he will repair America’s drug problem by executing drug dealers using extrajudicial means, as is practiced in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia, three countries not receiving blue ribbons for respecting human rights.  Hmm, by the way, he suggests the death penalty be carried out soon after arrest—caught on Tuesday, hanged on Wednesday.  Smooth.  Efficient.  Very tyrant friendly.  No due process needed for those who traffic drugs.  As a counterweight proposal, just musing here, how about an extra session of waterboarding for those who advocate sabotaging a democratically legitimate election, which leads to an insurrection against our Capitol with the aim of overthrowing established law and order?  Silly, huh?  So, there it is, I admit I fail to love my enemies, a list headed by the usual suspects, Christian Nationalists, antisemites, neo-fascists, old-school fascists, warmongers, oligarchs, and MAGA sycophants.  The urge to slap these stinkers is tempting.

And so wrong!  In entertaining vengeful thoughts, I surrender to pettiness and nastiness in the same way as do those in whom I find fault.  It is difficult to treat others with empathy and respect when judging them as traitors, so I must deal with my weakness, namely the eye for an eye proposition.  It’s tough turning the other cheek.  Much easier to punch an adversary than to take one on the chin from him.

       It’s hard to turn a fist into a handshake, isn’t it?  Now, I wish I could shake the hand of the Reverend John Graves who not long ago sent me a text message.  He’s the CEO of Million Voices, an organization meant to spread conservative thinking to people of faith, meaning Christians of the uncompromising evangelical sort, those who stand guard on the right flank of America’s ramparts.  John, bless his soul, wants to refashion America into his vision of Christian gun-owners who ban nasty books and promote intolerance toward anything that does not resemble Beaver Cleaver’s hometown, Mayfield, USA, an insulated community somewhere in the heart of heartland America.  Sure, I know, his Million Voices thesis looks typical for a hardcore preacher from Texas, but to look at his voter guides, one sees only the view toward the right side of the house.  Every voter guide he publishes leans heavily to the right.  John wants to lead the charge: “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war.”  Apparently, Democrats are his enemies.  His view is correct, and all other views are wrong.  Come on, John.  Let’s have a discussion.  I assume you have read the Sermon on the Mount.

       When he was released from prison, Nelson Mandela referenced his thoughts.  “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”  I yearn to think like that regarding the Reverend John and all those wearing red MAGA baseball caps.  It is a hard steep climb to put forgiveness in front of retribution.

       It takes strength to forgive.  I confess that my autopilot is set to reprimand and animus.  Daily I struggle to adjust my attitude to something in the green zone of forgiveness and, in the process, wish that others will treat me as I treat them.

       To leave bitterness and hatred behind is a decision, a simple decision.

Age of Rudeness

Have you’ve noticed an uptick in disrespectful behavior lately?  Pressures of isolation imposed by the pandemic demanded that we change how we respond to one another.  Fewer face-to-face relations coupled with mask-wearing and increased Facetime, Skype, Zoom, and other digital screen messaging have resulted in life-changing and unhealthful social distancing, which leads to self-centered behavior, which finally leads to frustration and anti-social acting out.  The internet culture has long been infested with trolls, and they have divided their forces between the World Wide Web and us here in this actual world.  Most post-pandemic conduct has yet to recover.

 In the past, my glib response and private joke to any situation that I found unpleasant was, “This is an outrage!”  If I had to stand too long in the checkout line at the grocery store, if the neighbor started his noisy leaf blower at dinnertime, if some telemarketer called shortly after my neighbor’s leaf blower ruined the quiet of the evening, if that woman standing in front of the cheese section at Trader Joe’s refused to move until she touched every package within reach—that was when I said, sotto voce, to no one in particular, “This is an outrage!”  While I tried to make light of the situation, part of me felt a twinge of outrage.

 Why is everyone so rude?  For all that, why am I rude?  What’s going on?  In my view, rudeness is a societal malady that spreads from one person to another like a common cold.  Rudeness begets rudeness.  Say, you find yourself in a movie theater, and someone in a row ahead starts talking on a cell phone half-way through the film.  How rude!  Which emboldens you to a rudeness of your own when you say, loudly, “Turn off that phone, buddy.”  See?  One rudeness begets another.  If the contagion spreads, as it likely will, soon all those in the theater will be shouting and punching one another.  How dare you?  That’s the way rudeness works.  Distress and insecurity usually figure into any significant display of rudeness.  Honk your horn at that lady who struggles to cross the street even though the traffic light blinks ‘Wait.’ and she, frustrated and angry at her struggles, just may flip her middle finger at you.  So you honk some more while she pounds on the hood of your car with her cane.  Manners and courtesy be damned.

 Ever since the pandemic picked up steam, people have been angry and feeling trapped, more so, it seems, than prior to the spread of the virus.  You’ve probably noticed, haven’t you?  Road rage incidents pop up daily on the evening news.  In addition, the FAA recently sounded an alarm about air rage.  Airline passengers have berated and assaulted flight attendants, creating an unfriendly mood at airports and on airplanes.  Health-care workers, many of whom now carry personal safety alarms, must work around bad behavior as they care for their patients.  Rage is on the rise.  Political divisiveness has grown in mind-bogglingly degrees, and tribalism has become a clash between our group and your group in whatever context. Difficult times have caused anxieties.  Russia, China, Trump, North Korea, COVID, inflation, crime, Putin, gas prices, job security, homelessness, empty shelves at the grocery store, mask mandates, war, climate change, violence, scams, political animus, mass shootings—so many stressors that one would have to be made of marble to avoid anxiety.

 My lighthearted response about being outraged at every petty annoyance has been my isolated way to cope.  But for many folks, outrage is a daily response to damn near every disappointment.  How could they do this to me?  Not again?  Why, I never….  Why is that school bus not moving?  Who dumped a car ashtray in front of my house?  Not another telemarketer call.  Goodness, look at this utility bill.  I don’t understand why anyone would speak so vulgarly around young children.  I am sick and tired of, well, of everyone being sick and tired.

 It’s all an outrage!

Baseball Fans

Mid-October I attended a postseason baseball game, an 18-inning affair between the Seattle Mariners and the Houston Astros.  Scoreless contest until the top of the 18thwhen Jeremy Pena, Astros shortstop, hit a solo homerun.  Denied in the bottom half of the inning, Seattle lost the game, but, as a consolation, notched their first postseason appearance after a 21-year drought.  A game for the history books, it was hard to walk away too disappointed.

       What stays with me, though, was not the superb pitchers’ duel and the drama of an extraordinary contest.  No, it was the off-putting tone, the raucous behavior of fans, the beer-buzzed and obscene invectives shouted at the opposing players and at Astro’s fans, the insane loudness of it all, and especially the public address system’s brainless noise played at ear-shattering levels that encouraged 40,000 people to stand and flaunt muscle spasms as if they were in a mosh pit or were afflicted with St. Vitus’ Dance.  Projected on the big screen, the blatant nonsense was captured by roving camera crews focused on the most flamboyant shows of self-abasement.  The spectacle of fans making jackasses of themselves filled the intervals between innings.  Good Lord, gyrating people, what has happened to America’s pastime?

       I freely admit that I was reared as a buttoned-down Lutheran in Norman Rockwell’s America.  Our baseball games were accompanied with organ music and a matter-of-fact announcer who said things like, “And now batting, number 12 and playing right field….”  People smoked cigars and sipped two-dollar beers.  We sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch, but no one stood and flapped their arms as if having a seizure.  No one screamed at us to stand up and lip-sync the lyrics to the latest ditty of ungrammatical babel.  We weren’t encouraged to scream, “Let’s Go,” as if that meant some rational destination.  No, the only obstreperous sounds came from the organist when our team was mounting a rally, and then the climbing chords were merely a minor enhancement, nothing like the skyrockets and bass thumping that filled the whole stadium district of Seattle recently.  If I sound as if I am guilty of micro-aggressions, I plead guilty.  Moreover, I confess guilt to major aggressions because civility has found the ballpark wanting.   

       What struck me most were the discourtesies, the loutish conduct that is now standard fan behavior.  At one point in the game, thousands of fans began chanting “Fuck-ing Cheat-ers” when an Astro hitter entered the batting box.  E-gad.  Really, folks?  A few rows behind us, an Astro fan waved a “Hit it Here” sign, so the guy in front of me stood up and flourished his middle finger.  Nice touch, fella.  No, such behaviors are not all in good fun.  They are assaultive and not okay.  Societal discourtesies and outsized profane displays of disrespect for opponents left me with ambivalent feelings about attending future games, not only at baseball stadia but at all major sporting events except for golf and tennis, games that do not encourage boisterous fan clapback.

       Baseball remains America’s pastime; however, what was once a pastoral and relaxing setting for a game the whole family might enjoy now reflects a tone that is obnoxious and uncivil.

Spit

You may have noticed that professional baseball players spit a lot.  Among other busy-mouth gaucheries, spitting is part of professional baseball’s culture.  Pitchers lick their fingers between pitches, they serve themselves from the buckets of bubble gum and tubs of sunflower seeds readily available in dugouts, and they spit, fulfilling a ubiquitous part of the game because that’s what baseball players do as a demonstration of a psychosexual oral fixation, or whatever.  Okay, the psychosexual oral fixation conclusion is unsupportable, I suppose, but lots of stuff (gobs of gum, seed husks, wads of chaw, spittle, and God knows what else) shoots from ballplayers’ mouths as soon as the umpire shouts, “Play ball!”

Not long ago, pitchers employed the illegal spitball as often as they could get away with them.  Preacher Roe and Gaylord Perry made a good living loading the ball with their spit.  For decades, players squished chaws in their cheeks or dips between their lips and gums.  In doing so, spitting resulted.  Ball players had to spit.  All those juices from gobs of mushed up tobacco stew needed liberation.  If a player swallows a large wad of spit tobacco, the best medical advice is to vomit that toxic mushed leaf as soon as possible.  Today, smokeless tobacco is banned in 16 of the 30 MLB stadia, and only veteran players are allowed to take a chaw or do a dip during the game in those other 14 venues.  Because chewing and dipping tobacco is now forbidden for new players, gum and seeds are now the mouth teasers of choice.  Manager of the Houston Astros, Dusty Baker, is rarely seen without a toothpick hanging from his lips during a ballgame, unless he’s busy spitting, just his way of keeping his mouth busy without chomping on something.  Point is, baseball folks have an oral fixation unlike athletes in any other major sport.  Spitting and other uncouth oral behavior is part of the game that we accept, and to hell with Miss Manners who, I’m told, never spits unless a fly accidently buzzes into her mouth. 

Imagine a PGA golfer leaning over a putt on the eighteenth green.  Before striking the ball, he sends a big slosh of sputum toward his caddy’s feet.  Or think about a tennis player who stops before serving the ball to let a gob fly.  Think of the danger to everyone on the court if NBA players routinely spit while standing at the free throw line lining up a shot.  Not unheard of for an NFL player to dribble a line of blood, but thankfully all that headgear keeps spitting to a minimum.  I have noticed, however, that football and soccer players frequently swish-n-spit water or sports drinks during timeouts. 

What if the spitting culture spread to other public venues?  Imagine the scowls we’d make if our local priest, rabbi, or preacher spit after offering the benediction.  Just think of the shock we would feel if the local news reporter stopped mid-story to spit toward the camera.  Can you imagine the scandal if the president of the United States paused after every other sentence during the state of the union address to spew a gob toward the teleprompter?  Up to now, most restaurant workers have swallowed their mouth fluids, but perhaps a trend will soon come that places a spittoon in every chic eatery.  Hey, history does repeat itself.

Spitting in public will not, I assume, become a thing.  It’s not sanitary, attractive, or necessary.  Unless one is playing professional baseball, it will always be preferred to keep your mouth closed and your juices to yourself.